Using Automation assets

Use IBM Automation foundation assets (Automation assets) to store, manage, and retrieve integration assets.

For information about administrative tasks, see Configuring Automation assets.

About Automation assets

Automation assets is an instance type that enables you to store, manage, and share integration assets. Assets that are stored within the Automation assets repository can be accessed directly from the user interface of certain instances. For example, an OpenAPI specification asset stored in the repository can be directly imported within an API Connect cluster instance.

You can store assets in remote repositories, such as Git, to take advantage of the versioning capabilities of the remote repository. You can then synchronize the assets into Automation assets. For more information, see Remote repositories.

In the Platform UI, click the Browse Assets tab in Automation assets to get available integration assets

Remote repositories

An Automation assets instance can access assets in a remote Git repository. Any Git implementation can be used, as long as it supports one of the following:

  • No authorization

  • SSH key authorization

Important: Assets stored in a remote repository are read-only.
Adding a connection to a new remote repository:

  1. Open your Automation assets instance, and click Remotes . The Remote listing page opens.

  2. Cick **Create Remote.

  3. On the "Create remote" page, complete the fields as needed. The Git URL is automatically tested.

  4. Click the Create remote button.

Configuration options

You can configure a number of options on the "Create remote" page:

  • Automatic sync options

    • Synchronization with a Git repository is one-way only, from Git to Cloud Pak for Integration. Changes made in the Git repo source are synchronized to Automation assets. However, changes to assets in Automations assets that were originally imported from Git are not synchronized back to Git.

    • You can select the interval at which your remote repository is synchronized. To select the interval, locate the Automatic sync options tab, then click to open the dropdown menu and select a value.
      Important: Using an automatic sync option requires 25m CPU and 100Mi memory for each remote repository that you add.

  • Selecting a remote branch

    • After you enter the Git URL, locate the Remote details section. From the dropdown menu in the Branch field, select a branch from your remote repository.

  • Synchronizing asset types

    • You can select which types of assets are imported from your remote repository by selecting one of the supported asset types in the Asset types to synchronize section.

SSH Key Auth

You can configure an SSH key to access the remote repository. To use SSH, complete these steps:

  1. Open your Automation assets instance and click Remotes . The Remote listing page opens.

  2. Cick Create Remote.

  3. On the "Create remote" page, set Use SSH authentication to On to turn on SSH authentication.

  4. Copy the key that is presented in Our SSH Public Key field.

    Set Use SSH authentication to on and copy the value in the Our SSH Public Key field.

  5. Configure your Git repository to use the copied key. For instructions, see Adding a new SSH key to your GitHub account in the GitHub documentation.

  6. On the "Create remote" page, enter a URL in the Git URL field. If this is for a GitHub repository, the address begins with git@github.com.

  7. Click the Create remote button. The synchronization between Automation assets and the newly added remote repository begins. When it completes, the new remote is listed on the "Automation Assets" page. In the screenshot, the new remote is listed as "NameofRemote".

    On the Automation assets page, under the Remotes tab, the new remote is listed in a table with its Name, Description, Status, Created by, and No. assets (number of assets.)

  8. (Optional) To set the synchronization interval for Automation assets and the remote repo, click the Edit (pencil) icon in the row where your remote is listed.

User-supplied keys

You can configure your remote to use user-supplied SSH keys rather than the default. Complete the following steps to use your own keys:

  1. Locate or generate the SSH keys you want to use. Each key must be an RSA key, with no newline or whitespace characters.

  2. Make sure the remote repository is configured to use this key-value pair.

  3. Log in to the OpenShift cluster by using the oc login command.

  4. Change to the namespace used for Automation assets.

  5. Edit the secret containing the Automation assets key-value pair.

    oc edit secret <instance name>-ibm-integration-asset-repository-ssh-keypair

    • Set data:id_rsa to the base-64-encoded private key.

    • Set data:id_rsa.pub to the base-64-encoded public key.

  6. Enable the secret updates to take effect by running these commands:

    oc scale deployment/<instance name>-ibm-integration-asset-repository-api --replicas=0
oc scale deployment/<instance name>-ibm-integration-asset-repository-api --replicas=3

If you configured Automation assets to automatically synchronize with the remote repository, complete these additional steps:

  1. Click Remotes to get a list of available remote repositories.

  2. Click the edit icon (pencil icon) in the row for the remote you need to edit. The "Create remote" page opens.

  3. In the Remote details section, from the Automatic sync options dropdown list, select Never.

The new keys are now used. Repeat this process for each remote that you want to use user-supplied SSH keys.

Marking assets as approved

Mark assets as "approved" to indicate to other users that the assets meet specific criteria for your organization. You must have the assets.admin role to use this feature. For more information, see Cloud Pak roles and permissions.

Approved assets are marked in the Browse Assets tab with an Approved label or with a checkmark icon Checkmark icon in the asset table. You can also filter the assets shown using the Show only approved assets switch.

Screenshot of the Automation assets page Browse Assets tab, with assets that have the Approved label and checkmark icon

You can mark assets as approved during any of these actions in your Automation assets instance:

  • When you add an individual asset. Click the Add Assets button, and on the "Add asset" page, upload the asset. Next, set the Mark as approved switch to On.

  • When you create or edit a remote asset repository. Click Remotes, then click Create Remote or Edit Remote. On the page that opens, set the Mark assets synced from this remote as approved switch to On. This switch applies to all assets that you later import from this repository.

  • After you add or import an asset. Click Browse Assets, and find the card for the asset. Click the overflow menu (three vertical dots) in the card, then click Mark as approved. Alternatively, click the asset to open it, then set the Mark as approved switch to On.

Note: These options are disabled if you do not have the assets-admin role. For more information, see Cloud Pak roles and permissions.

Creating and managing templates for instances

For information on how to create and import templates that other users can use to create instances, see the "Creating a new template" and "Deploying an instance from a template" in Using the Platform UI.

Browsing and using templates to create integrations

Administrators can browse templates in Automation assets, then select one of those templates to use in creating an instance in the Platform UI. Any instance type that you can create in the Platform UI can be stored as a template in Automation assets, so you can share and reuse templates within your organization.

Click the "Browse assets" tab on the Automation assets home page to access and use templates in any of the following ways:

  • Click the card for a template so you can view the template and its contents, then click the Create using template button to start using the template in the Platform UI.

  • Click the overflow menu icon (three vertical dots) on the card for a template to get a list of options that includes Create using template.

  • For entries in the table of available assets, click the Create using template ("+") icon on the right side of each row.

    Create using template icon on the table of available assets  

Supported file types

To prevent the upload of malicious files, only the following file types are supported in Automation assets:

  • Any non-binary text file

  • Code files: .json, .yaml, .yml, .avsc, .wal

  • Text files: .zip, .pdf

  • Images: .svg,.png, .jpg, .webp, .bmp, .gif, .avif